World 7-4
by akg.writes
Summary: Shepard wasn't about to judge a man for his drug habits - there was some weird ass shit in the galaxy and if it took a man a little chemical reinforcement to deal with it, well, she wasn't in a position to judge - but surely mushrooms that size caused pretty significant gastrointestinal distress. Perhaps that was why he was a plumber?


_Author's Note:_

_There's a creative writing group at work. We have monthly challenges and whatnot and while I don't normally have time to contribute, there was one I couldn't resist: "Character Collision". The requirements were simple:_

_1) the story had to be fewer than 2,000 words;_

_2) it had to feature at least two characters from different IPs (Blizzard, Disney, etc.);_

_3) each character had to have a goal; and_

_4) by the end of the scene, at least one character had to have accomplished that goal._

_Obviously, I failed spectacularly at the first requirement. Actually, now that I think about it, I failed at everything else too because I think this challenge was from April. Maybe even March. Oops?_

* * *

The last time Commander Shepard had found herself questioning exactly what she was doing and why, she had been watching an angry, million-year-old sentient spaceship crash directly into the Citadel with the ruined, impromptu allied fleets of the asari, turians, and humans scattered and reeling in its wake.

It had been acting as, in her wholly accurate though arguably quite limited experience indicated, angry, million-year-old sentient spaceships were wont to do: that is, as a vanguard for an immeasurably large and powerful fleet of equally angry, million-year-old sentient spaceships that would bring about the destruction of all space-faring species in the galaxy.

She had been acting as, in her wholly accurate and arguably quite extended experience indicated, humanoids under such conditions were wont to do: that is, diving rather desperately and inelegantly for cover.

Some small, unerringly and refreshingly rational part of her mind had realized what exactly the dying behemoth's trajectory was and had prompted her to scramble for cover even as the glass of the once-beautiful upper chambers shattered around her. The less small and quite significantly less rational part of her mind had prompted her a few cacophonous moments later to check her ammo reserves and slam an impatient fist against her personal shield generators to restart them because... well hell, _what if the angry, million-year-old sentient spaceship wasn't dead?_

Naturally, she hadn't had any more bullets and of course her personal shields had been fried beyond any possible hope of field repair. She had also considered the fact that the ever-widening black spots flickering ominously in her vision meant she was pretty badly concussed. But she had dragged herself out from the debris, battered and bruised and unarmed and concussed and in really, really bad need of a drink, and as she checked to see what she had available to at least _throw _at the maybe-not-dead sentient spaceship, had found herself questioning exactly which life choices had found her in this particular position.

Fortunately, the angry, million-year-old sentient spaceship had been well and truly dead, she'd gotten to put 'Savior of the Citadel' on her business cards, and the debate about possibly questionable life choices had fallen by the wayside.

Until now.

Having found herself willingly jumping down an inexplicably large green pipe, landing ignominiously on her ass in near perfect blackness on what she could only assume were more bricks - always with the fucking bricks on this planet! - and being smashed into said bricks by the bodies of her two squadmates landing on top of her... she found herself revisiting that whole awkward possibly-questionable-life-choices internal debate.

Shepard sighed into the darkness and flipped her helmet's visual input unit to night vision, patiently giving said squadmates - Tali'Zorah and then Alenko if the order of grunts had been any indication - ten very generous seconds to get the hell off of her before she started shooting.

Tali'Zorah spat out a rather impressive and seemingly well-informed series of curses - Shepard didn't technically speak quarian but if there was one thing she prided herself on, it was an ability to recognize new and fantastically foul invectives from other languages and then use them to rather spectacular effect later on down the line - and rolled off of her. She was still muttering curses too foul for the translators to attempt but Shepard could tell from her tone that at least this time, the various references to questionable parentage and assorted orifices seemed to be directed at her flickering, sputtering omni-tool and not at gravity.

Alenko took a moment longer to recover than Tali'Zorah - the quarian engineer had probably knocked the wind out of him when she landed - but as soon as he was upright, he leaned down to grab Shepard's upper arm and hauled her to her feet as well.

Good soldier, that one. Powerful biotic. Nice guy. Bit too gentlemanly for her tastes. Awfully chivalrous. He probably wanted kids and white picket fences. Shepard was pretty good with fences - either building makeshift versions of them up out of battlefield debris or mowing them down in a rain of righteous gunfire - but she wasn't too good with kids. She was pretty sure kids didn't belong around live firearms and she wasn't about to give those up. She wondered when she'd have to break it to him. Hopefully it could wait until after she successfully saved all space-faring life as they knew it from certain -

There was the unmistakable sound of a shoe against brick - always the fucking brick! - and Shepard whirled around, reaching out in the near total blackness as her eyes adjusted to the sudden, offensively bright inputs of the night vision settings, and wrapped her hand effortlessly around what was an unmistakably squishy and vulnerable throat.

Human, she thought clinically, the increasing pressure she placed on the throat allowing her a quite clear understanding of its familiar anatomy.

"It's me," rasped the now familiar though oddly-accented voice of her most recent squadmate. He wheezed slightly against the pressure she had on his throat. "Mario."

Mario. Of course it was.

She relaxed her grip on his neck and watched his still somewhat fuzzy and grainy image stagger slightly, a meaty hand flying up to his throat as he gasped for breath.

"Where are we?" she asked instead of apologizing.

"The princess is here," the little man in the red suit replied testily, glaring at her from underneath the wide brim of his cap as he righted it.

"Of course she is," agreed Shepard easily. She had no idea who the princess was, nor did she have even the vaguest idea for which socio-political body she was titular head of state, but the little man in the red suit had been nothing if not utterly convinced of her importance. Granted, men's definitions of 'importance' were sometimes swayed by factors other than the socio-political; Alenko, for example, thought Shepard was highly important and she was fairly certain it didn't have all that much to do with her saving all space-faring life from certain and inexorable doom.

Frankly, Shepard wasn't even entirely sure what the name of this particular planet actually was, let alone anything about their political climate - hell, she was still trying to figure out why they seemed to like bricks so much - but she was willing to play along until she could find the stolen generator. She'd spent her entire adult life in the Alliance; she knew damned good and well what would happen if she had to supplement her 'Sir yes sir!'s with anything other 'Mission accomplished'.

And so she just nodded briskly at the little man in the red suit, releasing her trusty assault rifle from its moorings on her back with an expert flick of a wrist, and jerked her head in the general direction of 'ahead'.

"Let's go," she said.

The little man in the red suit stared up at her suspiciously.

She stared back down at him equally suspiciously.

They stared at each other suspiciously.

"You first," she said finally.

He grunted something she couldn't quite make out - whatever it was, it didn't have the stench of a really good curses did so she didn't much care - and then whirled around and hopped off.

Hopped.

She watched him for a long moment, expression scrupulously blank.

He didn't seem to get winded, she noted just as his feet made brief contact with the ground before he flew up again, and he had an alarmingly good vertical leap for such a tiny man. She wondered idly if it had something to do with the giant mushrooms he seemed to have a habit of chasing after. She wasn't about to judge a man for his drug habits - there was some weird ass shit in the galaxy and if it took a man a little chemical reinforcement to deal with it, well, she wasn't in a position to judge - but surely mushrooms that size caused pretty significant gastrointestinal distress.

Perhaps that was why he was a plumber?

She heaved a sigh then took off after him at an easy jog, hearing the armored footfalls of her squadmates fall into a well-practiced, familiar rhythm behind her.

She, of course, did not hop. Fortunately, neither did they. She'd have hated to have to shoot them after all they'd been through together.

The little man sprang upwards with a sudden deliberateness that his normal rather haphazard hopping lacked, one knee upraised and one meaty little fist held above his head.

Shepard had followed him for long enough at this point to recognize what that particular combination of movements meant. She immediately threw a hand in front of her visor to shield it from the inevitable cascade of rubble as the little man seemingly effortlessly punched a massive hole in what looked to Shepard to be yet another completely innocent section of brick.

This time, though, a giant mushroom appeared in what was normally just a bunch of crumbling brick and mortar... and this time, the little man in the red suit actually caught up to it in time.

After any given groundpounding firefight, Shepard could recount the number of bullets that had been fired at her with upwards of ninety percent accuracy, even if a few of them had actually hit their mark and she was busily trying trying to dig them out of her guts before she bled out. During any given space battle when all her enemies wanted was to drill a hole in the flimsy sheet of metal containing little pocket of air that allowed her to live, she had no problem whatsoever concentrating fully on destroying their little cocoon before they could destroy hers.

She wasn't one to lose her faculties when confronted with the unexpected.

That said, if asked, she wasn't sure she could exactly describe what happened at the precise moment the little man in the red suit caught up to his precious mushroom. She wasn't sure if she just lacked the right words to articulate it - wouldn't be the first time; there was a reason she became a marine and it wasn't because she was good with words - or if she just couldn't quite translate the images her eyes had seen into something her brain could contextualize.

She blinked.

She watched him almost casually reach up to place a palm flat on the bricks suspended over his head, a feat he had barely managed with a running leap just moments before. He stretched his back almost lazily, arms wide to his sides, and then rolled his head around his suddenly massive shoulders with a few audible pops. He glanced back over at her during one pass to the right shoulder and smirked before resuming.

"Whoa," said Alenko with his characteristic eloquence.

"Oh keelah," said Tali with hers.

Shepard blinked again.

Huh.

She cocked her head to the side. "Got any more of those?" she asked hopefully.

"No," said the not-little man in the red suit tersely. "This way."

He bounded off once again, slamming a now much larger and far meatier fist into random sections of still-innocent brick.

Shepard let the rubble clatter against her visor unchecked this time.

Huh.

She took off after him at her now familiar jog. Her team paused only momentarily before falling in line behind her once again... though this time, the otherwise familiar cadence of their boots was interrupted by what Shepard could only assume was Alenko smashing an armored fist into a brick and finding what sounded like a pretty painful amount of resistance rather than a magical mushroom.

"Shit," said Alenko.

"That looked like it hurt," Tali commented helpfully.

Shepard, having come to an abrupt, skidding stop at the edge of a rather inconveniently bottomless-looking pit, ignored them. She watched a series of rusted i-beams float slowly up from the pit and up past the bricks lining the ceiling, head cocked thoughtfully to the side.

Floating i-beams. Of course.

"Whoa," said Alenko again. A faint flash of light in the periphery of Shepard's vision indicated that he'd fired up his omni-tool. "Hold on, let me -"

Shepard was sure he was going to do something exceedingly helpful like check exactly what the hell was keeping the beams afloat or perhaps find another route that involved fewer bottomless pits. That was very professional of him.

She didn't wait for him to finish. Instead, she took five measured paces backwards then broke into a sprint, launching herself into the air just shy of the very edge of the brick, and landed in an easy crouch on the next available floating beam. It did not immediately fall under her weight. After the day she'd had so far, she was honestly and truly surprised. How nice. Maybe it was her birthday.

"Or not," said Alenko, flipping his omni-tool back off.

Tali's omni-tool, on the other hand, flared into activity on her upraised hand, glowing an almost blinding bright in the near total darkness. "Mass effect readings are off the chart," she said after a moment. She let her arm fall back down to her side and looked dubiously at the floating beams.

Shepard shrugged. Floating beams were floating beams. So long as they held her weight when she needed them to, she wasn't too concerned if it was a series of mass-altering distortion fields or a handful of magical mushroom dust that made it happen.

She hopped off the beam and dropped down on the other side of the bottomless pit, landing again in a deep crouch. She caught sight of the not-little man in the red suit for just a moment before the heat sensors in her suit triggered an audible alarm and she instinctively threw herself forward into a roll to avoid the -

"Giant spinning fireball thing," she informed her squad mildly as she came up in a crouch once again.

A spectacularly meaty hand with no shortage of coarse, black hair sprouting out of it appeared in front of her visor. She looked up. As she suspected, it was attached to the not-little man in the red suit.

Hirsute, she decided. That was the word. Hirsute.

She clasped a hand around his forearm - or as far as she could get around it - and felt his fingers close over her own. She let him haul her to her feet.

They looked at each other for a moment before exchanging terse nods. He turned around and promptly went back to smashing bricks.

She watched the destruction - no mushrooms, she noted - then glanced over her shoulder at the giant spinning fireball thing. It crackled cheerfully as it spun smoothly around.

Huh.

A flash of movement overhead caught her attention and she had her assault rifle out and shooting before the not-little man could shout a warning. Not that he would at this point, she noted to herself as the corpse of her would-be attacker fell with a muffled thump at her feet. All she really expected of people was to have either the dignity not to die in the first place or, if that was too god damned much to ask, to at least have the wherewithal to not take the rest of the squad out with them... and the not-little man seemed to share that particular view. She liked that.

And he was terse. She liked terse. Nothing worse than a bastard wanting to fill the gaps in gunfire with idle chitchat.

She looked down at the body of her would-be attacker.

A large mushroomy-looking fellow. Of course.

She nudged the large mushroomy-looking fellow's corpse toward the giant spinning fireball thing with the toe of her boot. It sizzled a little and smelled kind of like it needed a good butter and garlic sauce.

Huh.

"Why don't you two just stay back here and..." She looked down at the mushroomy-looking fellow's corpse. It was smelling increasingly appetizing. She wondered idly when she'd last had a chance to eat. "You know." She waved first at the corpse then in the general direction from whence it had come.

"Keep the way clear for when you find something even weirder and come back this way with more haste and adrenaline than remaining bullets?" said Alenko.

"Yeah," said Shepard.

"And if Garrus asks, it's just a planned tactical retreat," said Tali.

"Yeah," said Shepard.

She turned around without waiting for their confirmations - they were spending entirely too long exchanging weary looks with one another - and trotted after the not-little man, replacing her rifle on her back. "This a normal sort of thing, Mushroom Man?"

"Probably," he called back to her. "Are you talking about the Koopa Troopas, the Goombas, the firebars, the Podoboos, or the hammers?"

"Mostly the..." Her voice trailed off as she did some quick math comparing his list to the list of things she'd encountered thus far. She paused and double-checked her results. She sighed, repeating wearily, "Hammers?"

"Yes," came the not-little man's voice. "Hammers."

She sighed again... then abruptly had to cut short her silent grumblings when an object suddenly made it out of the grainy muck that was her night vision, flying end-over-end directly toward her. In the blink of an eye, she pulled her rifle out once again and with an expert, efficient, sharp pivot of her hips, smashed the rifle's butt into the object, sending it careening away from her.

It went flying into nearby brick - always brick! - then clattered harmlessly to the ground.

She stared at it.

"Hammer," said the not-little man helpfully.

"No kidding," said Shepard.

There was a slight pause. "Nice swing."

"Thanks."

Another pause. "I usually just jump over them."

"Yeah, well." Shepard whirled around and again slammed the butt of her gun into another incoming hammer. Almost as if to prove a point, the not-little man jumped over it without batting an eye. "To each his own, I suppose. Where are they coming from?"

The not-little man hooked a sausage-like thumb behind him. "No idea but he never seems to run out of them."

'He'. Of course.

Shepard sighed again and turned slowly around, eyes following the path indicated by the not-little man's thumb. She peered into the darkness then upped her hardsuit's sensor resolution.

She blinked.

She rapped her knuckles twice sharply on the side of her helmet. The image before her did not change. Huh.

"Is that a giant turtle man throwing hammers?" she asked, just to be sure. She paused, wincing against the sudden brightness erupting in her night-vision view. "And..."

Was that a -?

Her hardsuit's heat warnings trilled again.

Yes. Yes, it was.

"... fireballs?"

"More or less," replied the not-little man. He jumped lithely out of the way of the incoming fireball with a practiced ease that made Shepard just slightly uncomfortable. She'd destroyed an angry, million-year-old sentient spaceship to save all of humanity and she still kind of thought that nobody should be quite that nonchalant about fireballs being thrown by giant turtle men.

"I don't suppose we have fireball capabilities too," she said.

He shrugged hefty shoulders. "Not at the moment."

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, askance, but he seemed serious.

Huh.

"Do you normally just jump over the giant turtle man too?" she asked, only just a little bit nastily.

He didn't rise to the bait. "Sometimes," he replied matter-of-factly, "but only when I don't mind destroying the power generator behind him."

Shepard's ears pricked up. "That's the generator?"

The not-little man grunted an affirmative.

"Oh, well then." Shepard nonchalantly slammed another hammer out of the air, suddenly significantly more cheerful. "Let's get to it." She strode forward purposefully, her pace unhurried and her gait uninterrupted by the next hammer she whacked almost idly out of the way. "Turtle Man got any friends?"

The not-little man in the red suit hopped beside her, smacking bricks casually along the way. "Not unless you count the hammers," he said.

"Fantastic," Shepard said. She sidestepped a fireball. The not-little man jumped over it. "Now if only we had fireballs too."

The not-little man grunted and broke a brick.

A... flower?... popped out of the brick. It was arguably one of the oddest plants Shepard had ever seen and she'd had a conversation with one that had been a few stories tall, a few thousand years old, and kind of pissed off in general.

The not-little man in the red suit jumped right on the flower.

His red suit immediately turned white.

At this point, Shepard was not all that surprised.

"Fireballs?" she asked in the same tone she might ask if dinner was barbecued mushroomy-looking fellows in butter and garlic sauce, knowing full well before she asked that of _course_ it would be barbecued mushroomy-looking fellows in butter and garlic sauce because Mondays were _always_ barbecued mushroomy-looking fellows in butter and garlic sauce.

"Fireballs," he confirmed. He tossed one out in front of them to demonstrate.

She watched it smack into a brick with an odd *plink!*.

"Huh," she said.

"Cool, right?" he asked.

*plink*

"It's not bad," she said. She jerked her chin toward the giant turtle man. "Got any stats on Turtle Man's shell there? Fragmentation ratings? Areal density? Anything?"

The not-little man in the not-red suit looked at her blankly... then slowly, deliberately shot another fireball out of a palm.

*plink*

Right. Fireballs.

Well, at least that meant that Turtle Man didn't like fire. That would have to be enough. Now that she thought about it, that was actually more than she usually got. Maybe it really _was_ her birthday.

She quickly switched out her stock rounds for incendiary ones - smirking just a little bit to herself as she did so because if there was one thing she liked more than shooting things, it was shooting things _and_ setting them on fire - then balanced her assault rifle back against her shoulder. "Ready when you are, Mushroom Man."

He grunted at her. "Crazy gun ladies first."

She snorted, vaguely insulted, as she pulled the rifle up and pinned the butt comfortably in the meaty part of her shoulder. 'Crazy gun lady' indeed. She couldn't remember the last time someone had dared call her a lady.

She peered for just a moment through the rifle's comfortable and familiar sights which somehow made even the dark, oddly alien-looking brick around her seem equally comfortable and familiar, then set off into the darkness. Her footsteps were measured and even, almost silent against even the ever-present brick, her perfectly calibrated stride allowing her to sweep her rifle across the darkness smoothly.

The not-little man in the not-red suit hopped along behind her. He tossed fireballs out as he went.

*plink*

*plink*

She sighed, closing her eyes for just long enough to remind herself that while his not-red suit looked temptingly not-bulletproof, she still needed him for the generator.

*plinkplinkplink*

"You got enough of those, Mushroom Man?" she asked finally.

There was a pause, then...

… *plink*

She assumed that was an affirmative.

*plinkplinkplink*

Her finger twitched against the trigger of the assault rifle. She tapped down the urge to spray her *plink*ing companion with bullets and instead consoled herself with the cheerful fact that there was a giant turtle man ahead of them to tide her over.

Her eyes swept over the scene in front of her with expert, clinical ease even as she moved smoothly, silently forward. Turtle Man was on a bridge over what, if she could trust the data flashing over her HUD, could only be a lava pit. Even at her current distance, the heat sensors in her suit were already flashing their polite warnings - Shepard wondered not for the first time which Alliance designer had gotten to choose the telltale, mellifluous *ding!* that signaled imminent death by fiery doom - and she figured she'd have twenty, thirty seconds tops in her shields before they overheated. Tight timeline.

Unless, of course, the bridge itself afforded some kind of heat protection, she mused silently to herself as she continued her assessment, eyes darting easily between the sensor data in her HUD and the actual physical world around her, reconciling one to the other. The bridge appeared to be reinforced with a series of persistent mass effect fields, no doubt powered at least in small part by the generator sitting behind Turtle Man, tucked into a protective layer of - what else? - brick. She suspected the bridge might provide quite nice protection from the lava pit if Turtle Man, susceptible to fireballs launched by not-little men in not-red suits, seemed to be comfortable... and it would certainly explain why he'd stolen an Alliance generator.

Maybe she actually would have more than thirty seconds before her shields blew out. If so, then it was almost _certainly_ her birthday.

She turned her attention back to the bridge and the giant, lumbering turtle man atop it. If Alenko were around, she considered, he could probably at least partially disrupt the mass effect fields underlying the bridge, possibly even enough to destabilize the entire structure and throw Turtle Man into a pit of fire before he could toss another hammer... And there was of course the very good chance that Tali could simply hack the generator and disable it from range...

Meanwhile, they were both... well, whatever they were doing. Staying alive, theoretically. Shepard's stomach rumbled. She kind of hoped that in addition to staying alive, they were also sauteing that mushroomy-looking fellow in butter and garlic.

Well. She rolled her head around her shoulders, her neck popping audibly. Looked like it was going to be the hard way.

She opened her mouth to bark orders to the not-little man in the not-red suit... and found him hopping right over her, *plink!*ing a fireball down just in front of her, and advising in a charmingly nonchalant manner, "Just keep moving. We're both faster than he is."

She watched him sail effortlessly over her, fireballs erupting out of his palms.

He was tubby. He hopped. His mustache was waxed with what smelled like pizza grease. His face was flushed an exceptionally unattractive shade of blotchy red and his hairy, meaty fists looked sweaty. Also, he was _clearly_ tripping balls.

He was not what she would normally describe as, say, a living embodiment of an avenging war god, glorious in his wrath.

But he _did _dodge a hammer mid-air, angling his body out of danger with impossible ease and an agility she would not have expected from his portly frame. He _did _land on a perfect, easy tripod of a heel, a knee, and a palm, his other meaty arm held out to his side for balance, the dark eyes under his bushy eyebrows alight with an almost manic pleasure in the challenge that Shepard found all too familiar. He _did _pull the arm back in and thrust it above him, launching himself back into the air a mere second before a hammer crashed into the ground below him, another set of fireballs exploding out of his palms.

Huh.

Well, tubby war-god or no, she wasn't about to let him have all the fun.

Turtle Man roared in rage as one of the fireballs hit its mark, leaving a smoldering crater in his shell, and Shepard took that opportunity to raise her rifle to her eyes and fill said crater with as many incendiary rounds as she could before a hammer came hurtling toward her and she had to disengage. Her rounds seemed a bit more effective than the fireballs alone, she noted as she rolled to safety then sprang to her feet into a sprint, the bullets burrowing deeper into the turtle man's armor before beginning their disastrous burn. Cool.

She dove to avoid a fireball and out of the corner of her eye, saw the not-little man in the not-red suit fly through the air, land with both heels on Turtle Man's head, and then go flying off once again.

The good news was that the blow seemed to stun the giant turtle and Shepard immediately took advantage of the temporary lull in fireballs and hammers, swinging her assault rifle up and around and getting three clean shots at his head. He staggered back, growling gutterally, one arm flailing for balance and the other blindly throwing a hammer in Shepard's general direction.

The bad news was that the not-little man in the not-red suit created a blind spot for himself while leaping back off Turtle Man's head - a FNG mistake that Shepard would have beaten out of him in his first week aboard the Normandy - and he took a hammer straight to the small of his back, the force of it nearly folding him in half the wrong way. He went careening through the air without any of his previous grace, landing with a heavy and remarkably unatheletic thud.

His suit, Shepard noted to herself as she sprinted toward him with every intention of reaching him before Turtle Man got his bearings, returned to its normal red color. Shepard wasn't quite sure about the details of microfiber technology on this particular planet but if she had to take a guess, she was pretty sure they just lost fireball capability.

But on the plus side, apparently that was all they lost. The not-little man in the once-again-red suit was already staggering to his feet, a little rattled perhaps but otherwise none the worse for wear, and she hadn't even made it past the flailing Turtle Man to get to him. Tough bastard, that one.

Of course, Turtle Man was apparently pretty resilient himself and angry enough that Shepard estimated he was giving roughly two shits that he'd been shot a few times in the head. He lowered his massive body over two, tree-trunk-like legs, and jumped into the air, his scaly, clawed feet on a collision course of the not-little man's head.

Shepard didn't have a particularly good shot at the newly airborne giant turtle, nor did she have nearly enough time or speed to make a dive for the still recovering not-little man, so she just sprang up as high as she could and slammed the butt of her gun with all available force into Turtle Man.

The tactic was effective in the sense that it threw him off enough that he landed on his side, nowhere near the not-little man in the once-again-red suit.

It was less effective in the sense that the blow hurt Shepard far more than it hurt the giant turtle man. She heard the unmistakable fizzle of her personal shields along with her own muttered, "Fuck", followed almost immediately by what could only be a heavy backhand from Turtle Man. She landed hard on the ground next to the not-little man, her suit's power system flickering ominously and her assault rifle skidding across the floor before he stopped it under a heel.

"You could have mentioned that earlier," she said conversationally as she clambered back to her feet, pounding a perfunctory fist against her shield pack once... twice... until the shields sputtered reluctantly back up.

The not-little man in the once-again-red suit shrugged and handed her her gun, eyeing Turtle Man as he too gained his feet. "I didn't know you couldn't see the giant spikes," he replied. He pulled his gaze away from Turtle Man long enough to raise an eyebrow at her, sidestepping a hammer nonchalantly. "Nice jump."

"When in Rome," said Shepard. "You look better in white, Mushroom Man. I take it we're down fireballs?"

He shrugged beefy shoulders, once again warily watching Turtle Man as he stalked towards them, hammer in hand. "Easy come, easy go."

Shepard shrugged as well. "Don't I know it."

With a roar, Turtle Man threw the next hammer. Shepard swung her gun again, this time in a smooth downward path that forced the incoming hammer into the ground close to them rather away from them in a wide and sprawling arc; the brick cracked from the hammer's impact but did not break and the not-little man caught the hammer under a boot before it could slide away.

Shepard picked the hammer up, hefted it experimentally to gauge its weight distribution, then abruptly whirled around and threw it end-over-end at Turtle Man. It hit him square in the eye and he staggered back with a surprised yelp.

Shepard let her arm drop back down slowly. She wondered idly where she could get a few of those hammers. They were nice.

"Huh," said the not-little man. "Never tried that before."

Shepard grunted noncommittally, reaching down to pull a grenade from her belt and tossed it to him. "Beefy arm like that, Mushroom Man, you better throw like a girl." She brought her rifle up to her eyes once again. "Go stomp on his head again. I'll piss him off. Throw that somewhere moist-looking when you get a chance."

He looked at the grenade dubiously. It looked awfully small in his meaty, hairy hand.

"You'll like it as much as the fireballs," she promised him.

It was his turn to grunt and then in a flash, he was in the air once again.

Shepard immediately dropped to one knee and fired a series of shots at Turtle Man. They didn't do much damage - she'd need a lot more time and bullets to burn through armor like that - but they fragmented Turtle Man's concentration enough that he probably wasn't going to bat the not-little man out of the air like a fly.

Quite a few things happened then.

The not-little man in the once-again-red suit slammed down hard into Turtle Man's head.

Turtle Man recoiled abruptly, one hand catching the not-little man on his rebound. The force of even the inadvertent blow was enough to toss the not-little man off to the side once again.

Shepard started shooting.

Turtle Man threw his head back and bellowed in rage.

The once-again-little man in the once-again-red suit pulled himself off the ground, wound up, and threw the grenade.

Shepard kept shooting.

Turtle Man shook his head roughly to clear it then started advancing dangerously on Shepard, drawing a scaly forearm across his face to clear off the blood.

She kept shooting.

She was considering two things - 1) possible alternatives for survival and 2) what giant, angry turtle men ate for breakfast because this one was close enough for her to choke on his breath - when Turtle Man exploded.

She blinked.

She blinked again.

She slowly stood up and methodically returned her assault rifle to its moorings on her back.

She stood there for a few moments.

The once-again-little man in the once-again-red suit came up to join her, dropping something heavy at his feet. "You're right," he said, folding his arms over his chest as he peered down at the remnants of Turtle Man. "Those things are almost as cool as fireballs."

"Fuck yeah, they are," she agreed, folding her arms over her chest as she peered down at the remnants of Turtle Man.

They stood together for a while.

"Nice throw." She spit out a little bit of turtle man blood.

"Thanks." He brushed a piece of turtle shell off his red cap then replaced it on his head.

After a moment, she looked down at him, asking curiously, "Does this happen to you all the time?"

"More than I'd like," he replied, "but it's what I do." He gave her a quick once-over then nudged an Alliance-issue power generator over to her with the toe of his boot. "You want a towel or something?"

"Nah," said Shepard, rubbing the back of a hand across her visor so she could at least kind of see where she was shooting on the way out. "It's what I do." She hefted the generator up and tucked it under an arm. "Thanks. You get your princess?"

The once-again-little man in the once-again-red suit sighed. "She's not here."

Shepard raised an eyebrow, readjusting her grip on the generator. "Stepped out for a smoke?"

"Wrong castle," he replied.

Shepard accepted that. "Rotten luck. See you around the galaxy, Mushroom Man."

"Take care, crazy gun lady."


End file.
